There was yet another letter to the editor in Sunday’s paper from someone, undoubtedly a white person who has never been really discriminated against, complaining about affirmative action because it is discriminatory.

Well of course it’s discriminatory. It’s designed to overcome the effects of over 350 years of discrimination based simply on skin color. It’s called swinging the pendulum back the other way. It could also be called payback which is as they say an uncomfortable experience.

It’s payback for 250 years of slavery. It’s payback for masters being able to beat their slaves whenever they felt like it, rape the women whenever they felt like it, give the women to a friend for his pleasure whenever they felt like it, sell a slave whenever he needed a few extra dollars, and finally for a master being able to murder any slave at any time for any reason and the only punishment he might be subjected to would be to pay his victim’s master the slave’s market value.

It’s also payback for 100 years of denying blacks their rights, rights that were guaranteed by three different constitutional amendments and at least one federal law . Most of the rest of the world called them human rights, something that our country was supposedly founded on. We called it segregation while the South Africans called it apartheid. And, in the height of hypocrisy, we cursed the Communist bloc for denying their citizens these same rights.

It’s payback for whites being able to murder blacks with absolute impunity for such heinous crimes as whistling at a white woman.

It’s payback for whites taking blacks out of jail, without resistance from the authorities, and stringing them up and setting them on fire because they were accused of a crime against a white person.

It’s payback for blacks being beaten or murdered for having the audacity to demand their rights like eating at a public lunch counter, taking the bus, drinking out of a public water fountain, or not standing aside for a white person.

And for all of those who are mumbling to themselves about me being yet another black person who thinks they deserve better treatment than whites because of something that happened a long time ago, well I’m not. I’m white and my family has been in this country since before it was a country and we’ve served in almost every war from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm. I enlisted in 1966, which is more than many of our current crop of leaders can say. The point is that I have every right to preach about what this country should stand for and what we should do to make up for past wrongs.

So if you’re willing to pay outrageous gas prices for the privilege of driving your SUV or minivan, and ridiculous heating bills for the privilege of owning a McMansion, then don’t complain about having to pay the price for your country’s, no, your ancestor’s immoral deeds. And before you complain that nobody in your family every owned a slave or you never discriminated against a black person, think about this - can you honestly say that you or your family never benefited from this country’s racist past, from not having to compete on a level playing field?

John A. Joseph

St. Louis